Loose ends are all that remain in Snyder inquiry

The details of an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the resignation of former Missouri basketball coach Quin Snyder could be made public within the next week.

According to Dalton Wright, publisher of the Lebanon Daily Record and one of two investigators charged with examining the situation, he and fellow-investigator Jean Paul Bradshaw, a Kansas City lawyer, have spoken with everyone they intend to speak with on the matter and are now focused solely on tying up loose ends.

“A week, that’s what I would like to see,” Wright said Tuesday night, after a day of interviews in Columbia. “I think that within a week (or) 10 days we’ll be done with it.”

It has been nearly a month since Snyder’s resignation, but various questions stemming from the embattled coach’s sloppy divorce from the program remain unanswered, even following an initial investigation into the situation conducted by MU Chancellor Brady Deaton.

That, however, could soon change. While both investigators have refused to divulge details of their investigation until it’s complete, they did acknowledge that the major component would be to find out what was said in conversations involving Snyder, Athletic Director Mike Alden, and MU basketball analyst and Alden assistant Gary Link in the days leading up to Snyder’s departure.

Some of those details emerged following the release of personal notes taken by Deaton during his initial investigation into the matter. According to the notes, Link approached Snyder on Feb. 9, a day before the coach announced his resignation to his team, and said: “Quin, the team is not looking good. We know how the book is going to end; the question is how do we write the last chapter?”

What remains unanswered, however, is what exactly Alden instructed Link to tell Snyder. Alden has maintained that he asked Link only to speak with Snyder in an attempt to “gauge how he was doing”, but Snyder, in a press conference Feb. 14, implied that he was offered an ultimatum: quit now or be fired at season’s end. Link has refused all comment on the matter.

Wright and Bradshaw have confirmed that they spoke with both Alden and Link throughout the investigation. In their meeting with Alden, the athletic director was accompanied by Michael Glazier, a prominent lawyer in the college sports business, according to Wright.

Wright, who is a member of the board of directors of the Missourian Publishing Association, which publishes the Columbia Missourian, said that he and Bradshaw intend to speak further with two people who were previously interviewed during their inquiry. But barring any unseen developments, those conversations will be brief and should mark the end to an investigation that has already spanned a week.

“I believe that we’re going to have at least another conversation with two of the people that we talked to,” he said. “And maybe three. But right now, I believe that we’re going to go back and talk to them briefly.”